Easter in Rome

04/24/11

     I had to wake up at about 7 a.m. on Easter Sunday in order to shower and get ready in time to meet Christina’s (my roommate) parents where we told them we would. I was really lucky, originally we were going to go to mass at a random church somewhere in Rome, but as it turned out, Christina was able to get three extra tickets to the Vatican so me, Lauren, and Kelly were able to join her in attending mass at the Vatican. Talk about a once in a lifetime opportunity. I was looking really forward to this experience so I had no trouble getting up. Thankfully, the service was outside, allowing for girls to wear sun dresses even though they exposed our knees. Otherwise, I would have wound up wearing jeans to Easter mass at the Vatican (although looking back, surprisingly enough, this is what most people were wearing!) 

     As we met Christina’s parents in the heart of Rome, we could see that it was going to be a crowded day. Every bus heading in the direction of the Vatican was crammed, but we had to get on one so we forced ourselves in. When we got to the Vatican itself, there were lines surrounding the whole thing in every direction to get through security. We wound up only waiting in line for about ten minutes before getting through. I found it bizarre that they never checked for our tickets going through security, making it so anyone could go, ticket or not. Once through security, we walked towards the center of the piazza towards the seating area where the mass would take place. 

     The Vatican looked stunning in its decoration with beautiful, brightly colored flowers and elegant red carpets running down the steps, along with red and gold surrounding the window in which the Pope would later come out of for the blessing. We walked towards the seating area and grabbed six seats in about the middle of the crowd. It turns out we were lucky to even get seats as the majority of people had to watch the service standing around in the piazza! The mass and the blessing combined took about two hours. Although all but one reading was in Italian, I could still sense what a great experience this was and made sure to soak up every minute of it. I even had the chance to take communion at the Vatican! 

Walking up to the Vatican and our seats

You can kind of see the flowers from this angle

Pope Blessing

 This is a clip of the brief Pope blessing in English. Only a couple words, but still neat to see.

Mass crowds in the Vatican!

     After the mass was over, we ducked out relatively quickly to try to avoid as many crowds as we could. It was a beautiful day outside so Lauren, Kelly, and myself walked back to our apartment. When we returned, we decided we were all kind of hungry so we were going to make a late lunch, early dinner for Easter. We had gone shopping on Friday for our food and we were excited to prepare it. First, we marinated our chicken in some olive oil, rosemary, and a garlic/pepperincino spice for a half an hour before placing it in the oven to bake. Once the chicken was started, we sliced up potatoes and covered them in olive oil and rosemary and added them to the plate the chicken was cooking on for the remainder of cook time. Meanwhile, we sliced carrots and boiled them, adding them to some sautéed broccoli. When we finished cooking it, we were proud of ourselves because it looked so pretty and actually reminded us of something our moms would cook for us. We topped the meal off with some red wine on the side. Following dinner, we had bought a traditional Italian Easter Colomba cake, which is in the shape of a dove. It had chocolate frosting (harder frosting) and the inside was yellow cake with bits of chocolate bursts inside. We had wayyy too much food and at one point our guy friend stopped by to say hello and we forced him to come inside and eat so we wouldn’t eat everything! 

Chicken & Potatoes fresh out of the oven

Our complete meal

Colomba cake... half eaten...

     By the time we finished the meal, we were in a food coma so we took naps! Later on that night, the three of us met two of our other roommates, Gina and Christina, and their parents at the Irish Pub Scholars for a couple of drinks before coming home and getting a good night’s sleep. For not being home for the first time on Easter, while this was very sad for me, I wound up having a successful Easter!